Re: Ctrl+V
You make some really interesting points, and I can't say I know what to make of any of this stuff. Even before you pointed out the overall pattern of David's actions leading to negative consequences, I remember noticing that in this movie, nobody is in control in the usual action movie way. They try to fend off the things in the scene where they get into the store, and the end result is ten minutes of sheer chaos where they almost burn down the store, central characters die, and the end result is the Lord of the Flies religious fanatic lady gaining an obscene amount of pull in the store. Even leaving out Darabont's bizarre nihilistic ending, every turning point in the story simply leads to more disorder and disaster. I don't know what to make of it, frankly. In the original novella, it's a little easier to deal with, since Stephen King is likely to go out of his way to make something be "just a story" and not deal with thematic concerns in a deep way, unless it is simply to show that life has meaning after all, or God (however you define him) is looking out for us... but this story, adapted by the relatively more thematically coherent and structured Frank Darabont, seems to point in a decidedly more definite negative direction. It seems profoundly pessimistic, but I'll be damned if I can pin down exactly what they're going for.